The ‘rake’ may be defined as the fee the poker room charges players (from here on out ‘poker room’ or ‘house’ is referring to a casino, online poker room, local card club/poker room, or perhaps a game run by someone(s)). There are generally two different methods that will be employed by the home to collect the rake. The very first is when the card room shall take a portion of the pot up to the specific amount. For instance, they might take 5% up to $3 before they ‘push’ the winner their chips. Simply how much the house takes and what requirements has to be met before they ‘rake’ the pot will differ between online poker rooms and ‘live’ (not online).

The other method, and also the one which won’t be discussed in too much depth here, is exactly what is called a ‘time charge’. The house will collect a particular sum of money every half hour or hour from all of the players playing. The time charge method is frequently not used for the lower limit games, as well as within the mid to high limit games, it’s not always employed. From here on out ‘the rake’ is only going to make reference to the rake that is collected from individual pots. This is the common method that most poker players are used to and will be the focus of the rest of the article.

Live poker rooms can have different requirements of once they rake the pot and at what percentage. For live poker rooms the percentage is often 10% and, according to the poker room, may have no more than $3-$5. Some poker rooms also have the minimum rake that they take from each pot, no matter the size. For instance, if there is a 1/2 NL game and the blinds are $1 and $2, they might take up to $3 from the pot on the flop. This means that if everybody folds to the small blind, he/she calls the big blind, and also the big blind checks, the house will collect up to $3 (determined by their policies), even though they’re heads up as well as the pot only has $4. The house will then take another dollar in the event the pot reaches $40 (10% of $40 is $4, but they have already taken $3) and, if there maximum is $5, they’re going to then take another dollar at $50.

Since the majority of players recognize that contributing $2 to be able to win $1 is a tough proposition, most poker rooms will permit the small blind and big blind to ‘chop’. This means that they can both receive their blinds back whenever they both agree which it is acceptable. This has to be done prior to the flop and no other players may be in the hand. Poker rooms that do collect rake regardless how many players you’ll find if there’s a flop, usually have a ‘no flop, no drop’ policy. Consequently if there’s absolutely no flop, irrespective of how many raises or how big the pot, the house will not collect any money from the flop. It needs to be remembered that not all live poker rooms collect rake if there’s a flop. This really is sometimes regional, but also can vary from poker room to poker room within the same region.

Online poker rake differs in several ways. The first is the fact that the percent of rake that’s usually taken is 5% which is almost always capped at $3. Not simply is there usually a maximum $3 collection, but there will be always no minimums. In certain games the pot will need to be as large as $30 before the house collects their percentage. In games where the house collects 5%, due to simplicity, they may divide the total amount they collect into ‘cents’. This implies on a $20 pot there may be a rake of $0.50. For online games, there isn’t an option to chop if the small blind and big blind will be in the hand before the flop.

The above mentioned descriptions of how live poker rooms and online poker rooms calculate and collect rake are the most frequent methods employed. As was mentioned, the rules will change, but a majority of poker rooms use the above rules and using them as guidelines can really help the poker player (whether a novice or beginner) decide which version offers the highest return. There are lots of other factors that determine the profitability of a poker game and it would be foolish to base game selection solely on the rake collected.

It is fairly obvious that the maximum rake that the home collects in live games is a significant amount higher than online. Even when it was assumed that they only charged no more than $3 the minimums tend to be higher than online poker rooms. Seeing a flop with three people and $9 within the pot ($6 after the rake is taken), one example is creates a negative expected value that is fairly difficult to overcome. It’s also safe online casino to deduce that one pays more per hand in rake in a live setting rather than online.

Despite the fact that more is raked per hand in a live poker game, the total amount that is paid every hour is comparable. In a live game, should the average rake per hand is $3, but there is only 30 hands per hour, the home will collect $90/hr. When playing online there is an average of 70 hands an hour. In the event the average rake collected per hand is $1.50, the hourly collection from the table is $105.

Using the above mentioned as guidelines (based off of 2/4 limit games) the table as a whole will pay more per hand in live games, but more each hour in online games. This is because of the amount of hands which are possible each hour per table online as opposed to live.